“It’s increasingly difficult for poor families to produce outstanding children”

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This post was last edited by PU3618988 on 2015-12-2 at 16:23. Having been a teacher for 15 years, I want to tell everyone that in this era it’s increasingly difficult for children from poor families to succeed. A teacher posted online that children with good grades these days tend to come from wealthy families, which sparked a lot of discussion online. On August 8th, the Yangtze River Business Daily reported that 20 years ago it was common for children from poor families to achieve success, while 20 years later it’s harder for such children to do the same; this resonated widely among netizens, indicating that it wasn’t just the opinion of this one teacher. Coincidentally, on August 4, Southern Weekend also published a cover article raising questions under the title “Poor Children Have No Spring – Why Are Children from Poor Families Growing Further Away from Top Universities?” The article argues that \"the lower one’s social background, the worse the schools one attends,\" and this trend is becoming more pronounced and entrenched. Over the past thirty years, **’s transformation has continued, but the transformation of the fates of individual people at the grassroots level has gradually come to a standstill. Sociology refers to social groups that occupy different positions within the hierarchical structure of society due to various reasons such as economic, political, and social factors, as social classes. The obstruction of mobility between different social classes is known as class stratification. Can poverty be a cause of poverty, and can wealth be a cause of wealth? It seems that the answer is yes. “Data provided in the study on equity in higher education in China show that the proportion of rural students at China’s top universities has been declining since the 1990s; the share of rural students at Peking University dropped from 30% to 10%, while among the students admitted to Tsinghua University in 2010, only 17% were from rural areas. ““It’s no longer easy for children from poor families to produce outstanding individuals.” The direct reason for this change lies in the current college entrance examination policies. As Zhu Huaiqiu, the head of Peking University’s admissions team for Hubei, asked, \"Policies such as direct admission, score bonuses, and independent recruitment add advantages to those from wealthy families; what do children from poor families have to compete with them on, and how can they change their fate?\\" In fact, it’s not only true that it’s increasingly difficult for children from poor families to achieve success; rural families have also lost faith in the idea that knowledge can change one’s fate. When it comes to job hunting, rural students are at a disadvantage as well. Reality has repeatedly shown that an competitor’s individual abilities are no longer the most important factor; what matters instead is family background and networking, a trend that is particularly evident in civil service examinations and recruitment processes in state-owned monopolies. As a result, the concepts of \"second-generation migrant workers,\" \"second-generation poor,\" \"second-generation rich,\" \"second-generation officials,\" and \"second-generation monopolists\" have become increasingly clear, and people feel that the avenues for changing their fate are getting narrower and narrower. “What does the social class referred to in the concept of \"social stratification\" entail? Professor Gu Jun from Shanghai University believes that China’s social hierarchy should be represented by a set of concentric circles, with \"power\" at the center of these circles. Those who are farther away from power are, like in the pattern of a spiral, pushed to the periphery. In my view, this division not only vividly describes the current state of China’s social classes but also points out the roots of class polarization. Yes, it’s not only education that is closely linked to power; the distribution of wealth is also inseparable from power. Scholars have long pointed out that the closer one is to the centers of power, the lower the risks and the more wealth one can acquire, while the farther one is from power, the higher the risks and the less wealth one gets. This is the alienation of power. “The other side of “it’s hard for poor families to produce outstanding children” is that “only wealthy families can produce outstanding children”. If the possibility of talented individuals emerging from humble backgrounds is to persist, and if further entrenchment of social hierarchies is to be avoided, it is ultimately necessary to restrict and regulate public power in order to ensure that citizens have equal rights to education, equal opportunities for competition, and pathways for advancement. Recommended from Huanqiu Net